Items tagged with Waze

“In need your clothes, your boots, and for you to turn right in 300 feet.” Google’s popular Waze navigation app is a boon for frequent road travelers with its informative traffic mapping and police alerts, and the thorn in the sides of police departments around the country. After all, traffic cops our out to nab speeders and secure extra revenue for their cities/counties, and Waze puts a serious damper on this form of taxation. With that being said, we definitely know which side actor (and former California governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger takes. He’s definitely endorsing Waze, as he has lent his...Read more...

Traffic-crowdsourcing app Waze, which describes itself as being about “contributing to the common good out there on the road,” has a new feature that certainly meshes with its goals: AMBER Alerts. Starting today, Waze users will receive AMBER Alerts about local, missing children when alerts are sent by authorities.Because people use Waze while driving, the company has to be careful about when (and how) it displays AMBER Alerts. The system Waze is setting in place at the outset makes sense: the AMBER alert will only appear once your car has been stopped for 10 seconds. You can tap the map to hide...Read more...

Google announced today that its Waze app has graduated to the big leagues and has officially joined Google Mobile Services along with other “essential” apps like Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, and Google Maps. This move will give OEMs the option to preinstall Waze on their smartphones and tablets so users can enjoy the benefits of the app “straight out of the box.” "If a leading telecom preinstalls Waze in his handsets, a large percentage of the population would immediately have access to blocked roads, dangerous intersections traffic and more in real time," said Waze spokesperson Julie Mossler. "There's...Read more...

A few weeks ago, we brought you a story about Google’s Waze app and how law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are becoming increasingly paranoid about how the app is being used. In a nutshell, Waze allows drivers to report on road hazards, traffic jams, accidents, and of course police activity. All of this information is reported in near-real-time, and with millions of drivers using the app, it provides a wealth of data to road warriors. But many police departments see the app as a threat. Late last month, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said that the Waze app can be “misused by those...Read more...

As someone who does a lot of driving and depends greatly upon the Waze app (Waze has roughly 50 million users in over 200 countries around the world), this bit of news struck a nerve with me. Law enforcement agencies across the country are coming out against the app, saying that would-be cop killers could use it to stalk officers while they are doing their jobs. But before we get to the complaints, let’s talk a little bit about what Waze actually does. First and foremost, Waze operates like a traditional GPS app, giving you turn-by-turn directions to a destination, voice prompts with spoken street...Read more...

Hopefully Google didn't pop the top on expensive bottles of champagne celebrating the $1.1 billion acquisition of Waze, a popular GPS-based turn-by-turn navigational app for mobile that hard drawn interest from a number of suitors, including Facebook. The expensive acquisition has drawn the attention of antitrust lawyers at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which have contacted Google about its purchase. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the FTC may have asked Google to hang tight and refrain from baking Waze into its software and service until the investigation is complete. At...Read more...

For some, spending a billion bucks comes easy. Just this week, Yahoo closed its deal to acquire Tumblr with next to no fuss from regulators. But when it comes to Google, it seems that the feds are constantly casting glances. The company recently announced its intentions to acquire rival mapping firm Waze for over a billion dollars, but now the Federal Trade Commission has launched an antitrust investigation to see if the deal will be allowed. Google has confirmed that such an investigation is ongoing, but won't speak further on the details. Media reports suggest that the breaking up of the deal...Read more...

If you were the market's leader in maps, what would you do? If you'd seek out one of the hottest GPS mobile apps, then your train of thought would align to Google's. A deal has been rumored for the past week, but it seems certain today: Google has acquired Waze for a cool $1.1 billion, beating out Facebook to the acquisition. Waze is a GPS app first and foremost, but it goes beyond the others by crowdsourcing information to make the information it spits back a lot more useful. With it, you can automatically contribute traffic data to the pool, and manually report accidents and other hazards. You'll...Read more...

Google looks to be playing some expensive defense against Facebook, as the two companies are vying to buy Israeli satellite mapping startup Waze, reports Reuters. Facebook is reportedly offering $1 billion for Waze, so if Google wants to try and block Facebook from getting into the mobile mapping game, it’s going to cost them. According to the report, nothing is set in stone either way, although Facebook has apparently been in talks with Waze for six months. Waze is a unique mapping service in that it relies on crowd-sourced data from its 47 million users to deliver real-time traffic information...Read more...